Forget The '50s, Visitor Advises City's Downtown Business Group

September 20, 1991|By SHERI VENEMA ; Courant Staff Writer

C America's downtowns have been forever changed by the automobile and the suburban mall, and they should stop trying to return to the 1950s, said the leader of a downtown business group from Portland, Maine.

"We're not going to get another department store in our downtown. Those days are gone forever," said Jay Hibbard, director of Intown Portland Exchange.

Hibbard spoke Thursday at the "Hartford in Perspective" forum at the Old State House. The seven-week forum, which brings leaders from cities around the country to Hartford, was organized by the Greater Hartford Architecture Conservancy with help from area businesses. Portland lost the last of its five downtown department stores in February, Hibbard said. Now, the city is focusing on finance, entertainment and tourism to draw people downtown. And, although the downtown still has many vacant storefronts, it also has a comprehensive plan to encourage development and a thriving waterfront district called Old Port.

The plan, called Downtown Vision and developed over three years, has spawned changes in zoning codes and an ordinance to preserve historical buildings.

One of its key recommendations was to create and fund a local development corporation to attract and retain businesses. The city provided $1 million in seed money for low-interest business loans, and another $1 million for capital improvements. In addition, the corporation recommends areas for a type of property tax relief called tax increment financing.

"People don't come downtown to shop," Hibbard said. "They come to be entertained." Downtown should be so exciting that people, especially children, will want to be a part of it, he said.

"We're raising a generation of kids who've never been downtown before," Hibbard said. "For me, that's like the plot of a Stephen King novel. That's very scary." Although the city and business leaders have a partnership now, they didn't always work together.

When Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Maine said it might move out of downtown Portland, business leaders asked the city to help keep the insurance company's 600 jobs downtown.

The city declined, and the company will move to a suburban

location at the end of this year, leaving three empty buildings, Hibbard said.

And when the Old Port district was renovated, it was done with private money, he said.

"The city ignored Old Port for years," he said. "It was the private market that drove this." In the early 1970s, Old Port was full of century-old boarded-up buildings. A few developers took a risk, renovating some buildings into cheap retail space and offering second-floor space to artists. Soon the area supported an active counterculture that later gave way to more mainstream shops. Now the 12-block area is one of the city's biggest attractions.

People "came by the dozens, by the hundreds, by the thousands," Hibbard said.

The loss of businesses to the suburbs has forced more of the city's tax burden on its residents. And they are so angry they've started a tax revolt and an effort to recall six of the city's nine council members, he said.

Despite the anti-tax sentiment, downtown business leaders are now working to create a special district whose businesses would voluntarily tax themselves to pay for extra services, such as security and maintenance.

Such districts, already used in several cities, are an effort to put control of the downtown environment in the private sector. In Philadelphia, downtown businesses are spending $6.4 million this year for sanitation and security services after the city cut back on trash pickup and litter began to take over downtown sidewalks.